1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication systems and, more particularly, to automated text-based messaging interaction using natural language understanding technologies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Contact centers are used in many instances to sell products or to provide support for previously sold products. In a typical contact center, a customer will make a call and be prompted to enter information to enable that caller to be routed to an appropriate sales or support agents. Contact centers enable companies to provide information to customers and, as such, are a valuable asset to the company and to the company's customers. However, hiring and managing people to take calls in the contact center may be expensive. Accordingly, self-service application platforms have been developed that enable aspects of customer service operations to be automated, so that customers or other individuals may interact with a computerized system to obtain information without talking to an agent.
Generally, when a customer calls an automated system of this nature, the customer will be prompted by a self-service application platform to input particular information, which allows the self-service application platform to provide the customer with relevant information and generally interact with the customer. For example, where the customer calls the self-service application using a touch-tone phone, the user may provide input by pressing keys to generate DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) signals. Alternatively, an Interactive Voice Response system may be used to prompt the user to speak particular words, and the self-service application platform will then use voice recognition software to obtain input from the user. Generally, the system will play a prompt and request the user to enter some information. When the user enters the information (either by speaking or via their keypad) the system will query a database, host, etc., and respond to the caller with some information (typically based on the initial response from the caller). This process may iterate several times.
As technology has developed, larger numbers of people have begun using text-based messaging as a preferred form of communication. Various forms of text-based messaging have been developed, such as chat, instant messaging (IM), messages transmitted using Short Messaging Service (SMS) which are commonly referred to as “text messages”, and email. Recognizing this trend, contact centers have added customer agents that are able to communicate with customers via text messaging such as via chat, IM, SMS, etc.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0256200 teaches a voice application developed utilizing a voice application tool that is also operable to provide application interaction capabilities to text clients. The voice application and corresponding text application in this published application is an Interactive Voice Response system which provides users with menus of possible options and allows the users to enter selection using either voice or via text message. For example, “for English, press or say ONE”. As self-service application platforms continue to develop, it would be advantageous to provide an alternative way for users to interact with these types of automated platforms.